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I love the Internet because of its transparency. I wanted to address a post made in the GBN group on Facebook that I believe is self promotional but others may or already have disagreed.The posts format goes a little bit like this."Hi travel bloggers we're new here please check out our new...

If you're a nervous flyer then look away now.Planes struggled to land at Bilbao's Loiu airport in high winds on Wednesday. Some planes were unable to land and four flights were diverted due to the adverse weather. Photo by redjar  ...

If it were a dead horse then this one has been flogged to the bone. Yet, has anyone ever come to a decisive conclusion?So, who will come out on top in the future? The winner is... My answer is both.The true winners will be a mixture of journalists and bloggers based on Google's AuthorR...

Tomorrow I'm off to visit Poland.It's a country I've never been to so I'm extra excited at having the opportunity to see what the country has to offer.Poland is one of the host nations for the  2012 UEFA European Football Championship (the other host is Ukraine) so it'll be an opportun...

It has been something that had been bugging me for a while, being on a press trip or even just on holiday and tweeting, checking in yet not everyone was able to visualise the trip.Non techie people that I knew just either weren't on twitter or just couldn't keep up with the commentary. Peopl...

Like moths to a flame or magpies to shiny things, people are drawn to claims of money-making.Especially when it involves something they already have a passion for, isn't that everyone's dream? Treating it like a business Travel blogging is no different. It seems that people are scrambling ...

As with most aspects and functionality on TravMonkey.com the photography section and profile pages will be constantly evolving and improving, we'll be adding features and responding to feedback from our contributors and readers.For now we hope you find our changes useful and enjoy the photos...

It feels like a bubble when bloggers with sites that are clearly in need of attention in terms of content and design are preaching at you about how to be a blogger and Facebook groups are full of claims of how much traffic people get.There's a trend of bloggers wearing shirts, smart trousers i...

Two TravMonkey.com writers are in contention to be sent to Barcelona as part of EasyJet's inaugural flight to Barcelona trip. If you've read either Frankie Thompson's or Neil Barnes's websites and articles, you'll know that they have a real passion for travel and would do a fantastic job with the...

Our top travel sites in Google have been published for February (they are always a month behind the current month).We've just published our updated results for the Top Travel Blogs in google and the Top Non-Independent Travel sites.We released the top travel blog results on Google + fi...

It's easy to forget when you've just been slaving over a blog post that for the user it's important that the article also contains useful take-away details.It's a good idea to include any helpful websites and resources that relate to the topic you're talking about. Details such as opening ti...

About Us Extended on Profile The "about us" field has been updated so that writers can add up to 1000 characters of text about themselves on their profile page. Splitting these two fields frees the writers from being limited to a small number of characters that was being used both at the bottom o...

So I was watching the video Men Who Jump Off Mountains Part 2 on Travelllll.com a few days ago.It's pretty breathtaking and impressively shot using GoPro cameras and DLSR's.It did cross my mind just how amazing it would to actually do this, watching the video it looks so smooth and gra...

On Saturday 25th of February I'm off to Chamonix on a snowboarding press trip.I was last in Chamonix three years ago attempting to improve my snowboarding but my strongest memory is of three of us rodeoing up the button lift before someone plugged the emergency stop.I may be a little rusty...

In the search for "how to travel the world" you can see my profile appearing next to the result. Although Matador Network is ranking no.1 the profile photo on TravMonkey's result draws attention and hints at authority, this is likely to make click through rate higher. Google Profile Search In ...

Put yourselves in your audiences shoes.This is the sound bite I get from my first session at social media week, a extremely interesting and effective session about "Social Media for Events" hosted by Like Minds. Registered for an event, or am I? Social media week in London had got off to a ...

What has happened to me? I feel a nervous twitch. I feel like I'm missing something, for two seconds I can't remember what it is. It's like that strange feeling when you know you got something you have to do but you can't quite remember what it is. Then I realise, it's the internet. My phone's...

After a slight delay we've finally compiled our list of top travel blogs in Google.The latest results are split independent travel blogs and non-independent travel sites (coming soon).The results work like this: We take the estimated traffic from keywords a site ranks in the top 20 of ...

Pinterest, seemingly everyone's favourite social network at the moment has already found a way to monetise its users submissions.I first ran across an article on LLSocial.com but it looks like some bloggers were discussing the issue in January.Pinterest will modify links from your pins ...

Many bloggers have focused criticism on certain types of articles that they believe have been done to death. Produced over and over again.The discussion has often been focused on articles such as "things to do in..." a city, place or country, with the point being made that it's yet another a...

I've been busy in the last few weeks. Busy developing, curating, publishing, being social, I've even made it down to the gym a few times.My inbox has been particularly full, but not always with things that are a priority. It's increasingly stuffed with press releases, competitions, SEO artic...

The advertising watchdog has accused TripAdviser of misleading it's users as not all reviews may be real. The ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) accused the website of not verifying whether or not the users who submitted reviews were genuine.TripAdvisor who claim "Unbiased holiday reviews, ...

We've all been there whilst traveling, sat in a cafe, bar or a shop and been reminded of a time and place where you first heard that song.You're instantly whisked back to the beautiful beach, sunset, bar or restaurant where you had that memerable experience.Maybe you had heard the song b...

I often pose questions on Twitter and occasionally Facebook but now I'm being encouraged to ask a question to people in my Google + circles after I perform a Google search.This feature was rolled out recently (covered on Search Engine Land) but my browser is usually the last to see the chang...

As I've touched upon in previous articles, creating quality content that your users want to consume is extremely important but to create a useful resource is really where the real power is.So here are 2 website tips that will boost your search traffic in the long term if you implement them c...

Have you placed most of your advertisements above the fold on your website?Do you have a large unnecessary header at the top of your blog? It's just become a little more important to think about your travel blogs design from your users point of view. Google has announced that it will be pena...

So you've half heartedly setup a Google + page for your travel blog but haven't yet had time to manage it properly?After all, you've got a Facebook fan page and your twitter account to manage on top of trying to actually publish a blog post. Pinterest.com has also come along and lots of peop...

Back in November we re-launched TravMonkey.com with much more focus on our talented writers.Since then we've had some impressive articles and photos published on the site. Here's a round up of our new writers and some of their content.Gabriel Morris Twitter: @gabrieltravelGabriel...

Bloggers are constantly evolving, learning new skills, adapting in order to survive online. This gives them skills that you can only really learn by trial and error. It takes hard work, dedication and not much time for naval gazing. Multi-Skilled To be a great blogger you need to be multi-skil...

Australian Erin Langworthy fell from the Victoria Falls bridge into the Zambesi River after her bungee cord snapped on new years eve. Erin was forced to battle the rapids with both feet still tied with her bungee cord as she was swept down river.Ms Langworthy was treated at Victoria Falls cl...

Next week we will be updating our list of top 100 travel sites in Google for the US and UK.These statistics take the keywords that the travel websites rank in the top 20 of Google for and add up the approximate traffic for those keywords. The sites are then ranked against each other. The list ...

I spent my New Years in Brussels as I wanted to go somewhere a little different to home. In my hotel room I tuned into youtube to check out the London Firework display that was seeing in 2012, I watched in awe.They were simply amazing, watch the video for yourself but I'd say it would be ve...

Much of my New Years eve was spent savouring strong Belgium beer in Delirium, a bar near the Grand Place in Brussels that has over 2000 different types of beer.Before leaving for Brussels I'd mentioned to many people that I was heading there for new years. Their response was often the same, ...

When I left home to travel for two years I was determined to leave behind anything that I thought was unnecessary, this included technology. Leaving a job as a programmer I wanted to get away from staring at a monitor all day, I wanted to spend some time off the grid. I ditched the computer, mob...

My new years resolution for 2011 was predictable enough, to travel more. 2010 was difficult to beat, I spent some time traveling to Australia, Fiji, Japan and Madrid. For someone with a full time job to contend with, it wasn't bad going.January - New Years in Edinburgh2011 got off to the perfect...

A friend mentioned that they had been to South Africa and that there was a stadium that had flood lights in the shape of giraffes, giraffe stadium. When I heard this I was intrigued and had to look it up, it turns out it's not far from the truth.There are 18 roof supports that are shaped like ...

So, it's that time of year yet again. It seems to come around quicker every time or maybe I'm just increasingly busy these days. I'm leaving London tonight to head home for Christmas in the North West. I'm looking forward to a relaxing Christmas after such a busy year of travel. It's been a great ...

After launching the new look TravMonkey.com about a month ago we've had a great response from both our readers and our writers. We continue to make incremental improvements to ensure our readers and our writers get the most out of the site. Save to Foursquare We've been experimenting with Fo...

Way back in 2006 TravMonkey was born out of a passion for travel and a desire to spill all the knowledge that I had aquired when traveling. In those days the online travel blogging community seemed pretty tiny compared to where we are today, to me it seemed like there were only a handful of sites ...